CHURCH RECOGNIZES HERITAGE OF ITS JEWISH CONGREGANTS

LINDA B. HIRSH ; Courant Staff WriterTHE HARTFORD COURANT

C At sundown Wednesday, 25 worshipers at the Universalist Church of West Hartford searched their souls in silence.

The Rev. Stephen Kendrick had given the congregants a paper to write down their burdens. One by one, they rose to burn them over a candle in a chalice. The flame's glow flickered on young children's cheeks and glinted in the glasses of adults. Then, the mournful scales of a Hebrew prayer soared over the church's pristine arches.

"We have no tradition of confession," Kendrick said. "It is hard to say I'm sorry to God and to one another, yet it is important to recognize the tradition of Yom Kippur. The purpose of looking within, even in our shadows, is to begin anew." For the first time, Kendrick has introduced the essense of Yom Kippur, the most solemn Jewish High Holy Day, in a church where about 95 percent of the congregation, which includes 500 adults, were raised in the Christian belief of salvation through Jesus Christ's divine grace. But the other 5 percent are Jewish. Kendrick said it is important to recognize their roots.

Since it is the Universalist way to glean truths from other religions to keep theirs all-embracing, Kendrick can weave elements of Yom Kippur, a day of fasting and prayers for forgiveness, into his service. By doing so, he pays homage to worshippers of Jewish heritage and enhances the Unitarian Universalist theology.

Before the service, Ivan Leibin of West Hartford stood under the portico wishing Kendrick a good "yom tov," or happy day in Hebrew.

"This is meaningful to me," said Leibin, a five-year church member who was raised in the Jewish faith. "I do not feel I have lost the context of my heritage by being here." There is a history of Jews joining the denomination. According to a 1981 study done by the Unitarian Universalist Association of Boston, 4 percent of the national membership was raised Jewish and 2 percent of spouses, like Leibin, are Jewish. Where the proportion of Jews is higher, ministers tend to include references to Jewish festivals, Association spokeswoman Deborah Weiner said.

Jews make up 20 percent of the Unitarian Society of Hartford's membership. The Rev. Jon M. Luopa nodded to Yom Kippur this year by playing Jewish liturgical music.

Four members of the 7 percent Jewish membership at Manchester's Unitarian Universalist Society-East led a service during the High Holy Days, the Rev. Connie Sternberg said.

Those two churches grow from Unitarianism, a radical form of Christianity born during the reformation which denied the doctrine of the Trinity. In 1961, they merged with Universalists, an 18th century group which believed God's purpose was to save humanity.

West Hartford's church was rooted in more traditional Universalist Christianity. But Kendrick found that many Jews married to Christians want to keep their ties. At his former Columbia, Md., congregation, 40 attended a service designed around Yom Kippur.

He does not ask Jews to surrender those ties, just to find a new vantage point within the Unitarian Universalist Church.

Rabbi Steven J. Mason leads Interfaith Chavurah for Liberal Judaism, a Hartford group where the vantage point is how Christians relate to Judaism. He said it is hard to introduce Yom Kippur into a Christian service.

"The Jewish idea of repentance as a release from guilt, a convenant, may not ring true" with those believing in salvation, he said.

But Kendrick has also turned to Yom Kippur to add the dimension of repentance and reconciliation to the Unitarian Universalists. The blending of Christian and Jewish tradition fulfills him.

Raised in the Episcopalian church, Kendrick called his family "mildly anti-semitic." But many of his friends when he attended Princeton University were Jewish. At one time, he even considered converting, but realized that Judaism included an ethnic culture that would be hard to assimilate, he said.

"One of my dreams was to find a way of binding wounds between Christians and Jews," Kendrick said. "It is a tragic separation."